Understanding Consumers’ Online Shopping Behavior during the Covid-19 Pandemic – Empirical Research

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted our daily behavior, from interactions with friends, colleagues, and family, to safety measures and working. Additionally, this pandemic has dramatically changed consumers’ shopping behavior. The purpose of this research paper is to examine the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on consumer behavior. Thus, this paper proposes a new model that incorporates three variables: attitude for online shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic, budget considerations during the COVID-19 pandemic, and future behavioral intention after the COVID-19 pandemic. This study’s main research approach is a quantitative survey and examination using a sample of Romanian consumers. Additionally, the proposed hypotheses were examined in a SEM model and all the hypotheses were supported based on the empirical analysis. This study adds theoretical contributions by assessing the changes of consumers’ online shopping behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. Managerial implications, study limitations and future avenues for research are also discussed.

Keywords

• consumer behavior
• consumer habits
• coronavirus
• covid pandemic
• digital setting
• online shopping